Christian Domestic Discipline

[milomorris]

Religion, another way to control people......

Religion can also be another path to enlightenment and self-discovery. It depends how one uses it.

[milomorris]

It also entails Bachman lying about being submissive to her husband.  If she was following the bible teachings as she claims, she'd also have her head covered while speaking in public and be silent in church and her husband should be either with her at all times, or be discouraging her to speak in public.

You seem to have Christians and Jews mixed up. It doesn't seem as though you understand how modern Christians contextualize the Old Testament. Even still, the Old Testament does contain Ruth, Esther, Merriam, etc.

Post some scriptures, and maybe I can help.

[delalluvia]

It also entails Bachman lying about being submissive to her husband.  If she was following the bible teachings as she claims, she'd also have her head covered while speaking in public and be silent in church and her husband should be either with her at all times, or be discouraging her to speak in public.
You seem to have Christians and Jews mixed up. It doesn't seem as though you understand how modern Christians contextualize the Old Testament. Even still, the Old Testament does contain Ruth, Esther, Merriam, etc.

Post some scriptures, and maybe I can help.

Oh, no, I'm definitely not confused.  See below - note: all of these are from the New Testament

1 Corinthians 11:3-16
1 Corinthians 14:34-35
Ephesians 5:22-24
Colossians 3:18-19
1 Timothy 2:11-15

[delalluvia]

Fair enough. It certainly could turn abusive.


But that's my point. They do think its right, and so do their wives. This isn't about the husband's anger, or the wife's self-worth. This is about both husband and wife following the prescribed "biblical" roles in marriage. Remember, as Katherine pointed out a few posts back, most of these people don't grow up in these traditions, they adopt them after they are born-again as adults. They are trained to understand that husbands and wives have some very specific duties and roles. So from their POV behaving this way fulfills part of those duties, and that this is the right way to manage a marriage.

You have to understand that we're talking about a different set of moral codes than in the secular world.

Except that they're wrong, Milo.  Yes, there can be definitive statements still made in this gray world.  Women are human beings just as men are.  If men can benefit from freedom and fulfilling their own desires and being leaders - and they do - why wouldn't women similarly benefit?  So any philosophy that stifles the ability of women to do these things, that keeps them from fulfilling themselves as human beings is not 'right' in any way.  

[delalluvia]

Well, I'm more of a believer in nature than nurture. But let's say it's all about upbringing. Even so, by your description is valid but not specific to the Christian community. That was my point.

I saw your point, but I disagree completely.  It's quite valid and can be specific to the Christian community, IMO.

What I'm saying is that I think families that teach that the man is "the leader, the shepherd" etc. -- in other words, families who advocate that the woman should be totally subordinate and submissive to the man -- are in 2011 very few and far between. Again, I'm sure they exist out there, but they are not mainstream, so to speak, conservative Christians. Don't believe me? Let's take a look.

I don't have to.  I have examples in my life.  My college friend and yet another college friend?  And I currently have two fundamentalist, college-educated, right wing friends.  And a Mormon friend.  They completely believe this.  Based on the numbers of my friends, that's about 35% of the people I know.  Look on TV.  The Duggars?  

Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Michele Bachmann, Ann Coulter, Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh don't say that.

These are people whose honesty I don't trust.  They're either opinion talk show celebrities or editorialists who might say or write anything for ratings and sales or politicians who might do the same to win voters.

I've never heard Pat Robertson and his ilk say that.

"The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians." - 1992 Iowa fundraising letter opposing a state equal-rights amendment ("Equal Rights Initiative in Iowa Attacked", Washington Post, 23 August 1992)[/b]

Are there some backwoods, backwards, old-school Christians who still teach their daughters that sort of thing? No doubt. Heck, I've met backwoods types who's families have been in the United States since the 18th century yet they don't speak English (only French). My point is that people like that are rare outliers, not what you'd expect from some average conservative Christian family.

They don't have to be backwoods, crayons, just small town.  Another college friend was from a small town in Texas.  She didn't meet a single black person until she was a teenager.  She has since moved back to that small town, married a small town husband, and lives across the street from her parents, brothers and sisters and their families in the same small town.

The stats are definitely under-reported, although in this day and age it's less because the woman doesn't think the husband is doing anything wrong -- women who think like that are extremely are -- as that she feels helpless, scared and/or loves him and is trying to protect him.

I'm really thinking it's where you live and the culture around you, crayons.  I see this all the time - from old married women who didn't dare leave their husbands no matter how abusive he was because women don't divorce a husband - so say old school Catholics - to women who are so desperate to have a man, that they'll put up with anything.

Masses of people don't usually "give lip service" to some candidate and then vote otherwise. Except when it comes to black candidates, in which case there's an actual phenomenon called the Wilder Effect (after Gov. Douglas Wilder of Virginia) about people telling pollsters they're likely to vote for a black candidate but then not actually doing it. You could argue that Bachmann, Palin, etc., would be the subjects of their own personal Wilder effect. But I disagree, and unless we have numbers we won't resolve that easily.

Oh, I think they do.  And quite often.

I've read it. It was published in 1985, and very topical in respect to the Iranian revolutio -- that is, with only slight exaggeration, what happened to Iranian women. As for North America, it wasn't, and isn't, as good a fit. It's dystopian, for sure, but we were nowhere close to that sort of society 26 years ago and we're much further away from it today.

I'm sure the women of Iran thought so, too.

[Marge_Innavera]

I think that -- to some extent, at least in some cases -- Christian Domestic Discipline is a form of BDSM that both spouses find acceptable or even appealing and that passes muster in the Christian community because it is practiced under the guise of religious ideology rather than a sexuality they, given their faith, would have to profess to find "deviant."

And I agree with Milo that many couples do not switch back and forth.

As any 'professional' can tell you, men who want to be spanked or who are otherwise fascinated by variations of BDSM tend to be 'alpha males' in their non-sexual lives.  It's a safety valve of a sort.

[Marge_Innavera]

I think we liberals tend to demonize conservative Christians to the point that many of us would believe just about any kind of 19th-century-style behavior is still prevalent. It's not. I think Michele Bachmann is a good example of what modern conservative Christians are like: their political views are very different from mine on issues like religion in schools, health care, marriage equality, etc. But as far as women go they're reasonably modern. That's why conservative Christians readily support figures like Bachmann or Sarah Palin; they are OK with women being successful and authoritative as long as they share their other political views.

If Michele and her husband practice Christian domestic discipline -- and obviously I have no idea whether they do or not -- I'm sure it's for their own amusement.

A good measure of how much times have changed, at least in Western countries, is the effort to sugar-coat the biblical view of women and the "duties" of wives.  In the 1980s and 1990s, the context was that a wife wasn't to be bullied by her husband; no, no, no; he was just designed as the household's "spiritual head."  

That was then, this is now. Now, the preferred buzzword is "respect."  Men are to 'love and cherish' their wives; women are to 'respect' their husbands -- apparently respect for the wife, and love for the husband, are optional.  Bachmann was doing nothing more or less than reciting the party line, word for word. Of course, the word used in the New Testament is "submit", not "respect" and I don't know of any translators who say that the word was translated wrong; but that distinction is a concern for those godless biblical scholars.

The basis for the party line is still that the husband stands in for Christ in a relationship; the woman for the Church. Sounds nice, if abstract, until you get to the fact that in Christian teachings Jesus is God incarnate; one of the three entities of the Trinity [i.e., the husband]. The Church, for all the bridal metaphors, is a community of limited, fallible, "sinful" human beings [i.e., the wife].

Whoop-de-do.  Married women here, please raise your hands if you've ever been tempted to regard Friend Husband as a god.

None of which has anything whatsoever to do with bondage or S&M games. I don't know of any psychologically or physically battered women who could tell you what their safe words were.

[Monika]

Religion, another way to control people......

Yeah, hence all the rules and the "if you don´t do as we say you´ll end up in hell" part.

[serious crayons]

These are people whose honesty I don't trust.  They're either opinion talk show celebrities or editorialists who might say or write anything for ratings and sales or politicians who might do the same to win voters.

Whoa. I'm not saying they're honest. I'm saying that what they say reflects the opinions of their constituencies/audiences. They're quite willing to say all kinds of ridiculous things because that's what their audience believes, or what they want their audience to believe, or what the audience wants to believe. That's why the fact that they DON'T go around saying that men are the leader of women is so telling. If that were a widespread attitude out there -- like, say, the idea that there's no such thing as evolution -- than you can bet they'd be saying it all the time. The fact is, they're not.

"The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians." - 1992 Iowa fundraising letter opposing a state equal-rights amendment ("Equal Rights Initiative in Iowa Attacked", Washington Post, 23 August 1992)[/b]

But see? This very quote just proves my point. Sure, Pat Robertson hates feminists. But note that he explicitly says that feminists are "NOT about equal rights for women" (emphasis added). In other words, equal rights for women is a GOOD thing, but feminism is not because (he says) it's about something else -- i.e., killing one's children, destroying capitalism and becoming lesbians. (Which of course is a much more plausible description of the feminist agenda.  )

This is just the right-wing version of left-leaning women who say, I'm for equal rights but don't call me a feminist.

They don't have to be backwoods, crayons, just small town.  Another college friend was from a small town in Texas.  She didn't meet a single black person until she was a teenager.  She has since moved back to that small town, married a small town husband, and lives across the street from her parents, brothers and sisters and their families in the same small town.

What does this have to do with what we're talking about? I didn't meet a single black person until I was a teenager, either. I grew up in a suburb that was 99% white, like all Minnesota suburbs in them days. I still live near that suburb and have friends there -- heck, I was there last night. Yet I did not grow up thinking that I had to submit to men.

Look, I'm not arguing that all women now grow up in families that are cosmopolitan and sophisticated. I'm simply saying that, even among conservative Christians, the idea that men are the bosses of women and women must to submit to their every demand is pretty passé.

I'm really thinking it's where you live and the culture around you, crayons.  I see this all the time - from old married women who didn't dare leave their husbands no matter how abusive he was because women don't divorce a husband - so say old school Catholics - to women who are so desperate to have a man, that they'll put up with anything.

Again, yes, sure. But these aren't women necessarily brought up to believe they had to submit to men. In the first case, they were brought up to believe you don't get divorced. In the second case, they are lonely and desperate.

Oh, I think they do.  And quite often.

The Wilder Effect doesn't apply to cases like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann. People who said they were going to vote for Wilder but secretly didn't do so were not also, at the same time, actively and passionately supporting Wilder. They were people giving face-saving information to a pollster just to be P.C. But the people who turn out in droves to see Palin and Bachmann, who defend them to the hilt in newspaper comment sections and so on ... these people don't go to those lengths just to appear P.C. They think those women are fantastic. And in Bachmann's case, anyway, they DO vote for her. That's why she's in office. She gets voted back in by her extremely conservative constituents, because they have no objections to a woman representative as long as she shares their conservative views.

I'm sure the women of Iran thought so, too.

Right. It took them more or less by surprise also. But they had a very different system of government than we do. America is not run by a dictator now, and I don't see the clergy taking over the government through revolution anytime soon.

[serious crayons]

As any 'professional' can tell you, men who want to be spanked or who are otherwise fascinated by variations of BDSM tend to be 'alpha males' in their non-sexual lives.  It's a safety valve of a sort.

I didn't say they weren't different in their non-sexual lives. I said people in their sexual lives don't necessarily switch back and forth from spanker to spankee.

Whoop-de-do.  Married women here, please raise your hands if you've ever been tempted to regard Friend Husband as a god.

Exactly. And if you asked a group of right-wing Christians the same question, I suspect you would not see a forest of hands pop up.

None of which has anything whatsoever to do with bondage or S&M games. I don't know of any psychologically or physically battered women who could tell you what their safe words were.

That's right, it doesn't.

Let me be clear. Obviously I believe there are abused women out there. And that some of those abused women are Christians. And that sometimes their Christianity is connected to their abuse, such as when they don't believe in divorce. And in A FEW cases, they were probably raised to believe that the husband is the boss of the household and the wife has to submit, and that somehow leads to their accepting abuse that they might otherwise not put up with.

What I DON'T believe is that most contemporary Christian families teach their children that women must submit to men, that a husband's word is law, etc. -- ideas that might one day lead their daughters to accept physical punishment by their husbands. I think most contemporary Christians at least pay lip service to women's equality, as Pat Robertson did in Delalluvia's quote. Does that mean they're perfect feminists? Of course not. Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin aren't perfect feminists, not by a long shot. But they don't believe they're inferior to men.

So while some of these domestic discipline cases may involve genuinely disempowered women unwillingly being subjected to domestic abuse, I think many of them involve husbands and wives who find the relationship appealing.

I think liberals tend to expect conservatives to automatically hold extremely outdated views of male and female roles. That's why they pounced on Sarah Palin for pursuing a demanding career when she had a baby at home. But the pouncing backfired, big time, because very few contemporary conservatives would claim that a woman's place is in the home (there are lots of conservative women with successful careers), and because it made liberals look like the sexist ones; no one ever questions whether a male politician should be leaving his children.